New research shows that positivity is the key to resilience–and the stories you tell yourself about your bad experiences help build it.

Living in a too-cool city (like San Francisco or New York) and working in a too-cool industry (like tech or media) tends to teach one that a certain effortless aloofness is the key to being successful, well-liked, and not stared at on the subway.

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This is very silly thing for a culture to reinforce. What’s fascinating–and worth considering if you care about your own well-being and that of those around you–is that more and more research shows that positivity is the key to resilience. And if you are living in a grind-centric city (like San Francisco or New York) and in long-hours industries (like tech or media), you’re going to need some resilience.

As we’ve Tumbled before, it’s not just wishful thinking. Writing in the Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith tells us that a positive outlook is “far from being delusional or faith-based”: it predicts whether or not we bounce back or fall into depression.

Smith references Dr. Dennis Charney, the dean of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who examined 750-some Vietnam veterans who were kept as prisoners of war for six to eight years–yet they did not develop depression afterward. Why? After many interviews, Charney found a set of characteristics of psychological hardiness–including optimism, altruism, humor, and finding a meaning in life.

As Smith notes, another study found that “venting” your rage–like by hitting a punching bag or throwing your wrath on someone who makes you angry–leads you to feeling worse. Not even thinking about it is healthier than expressing it in these ways, though channeling that depression into something productive is better. A study done by James Pennebaker at the University of Texas demonstrates why finding meaning in your struggles is key to long-term growth:

In a study, he asked people to write about the darkest, most traumatic experience of their lives for four days in a row for a period of 15 minutes each day. While analyzing their writing, Pennebaker noticed that the people who benefited most from the exercise were trying to derive meaning from the trauma. They were probing into the causes and consequences of the adversity and, as a result, eventually grew wiser about it.

Medical records show that the people who wrote about a trauma and worked out a meaning from it made fewer hospital visits than the control group, who wrote about a non-traumatic experience.

As well–and this is crucial for people who follow the advice to “go run it off”–Pennebaker found that people who used exercise to vent received no health benefits. (Though other research directly links physical resilience to emotional resilience.)

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Smith’s conclusion? There was something unique about the stories people told themselves about their experiences.

About the author

Drake Baer was a contributing writer at Fast Company, where he covered work culture. He's the co-author of Everything Connects, a book about how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational psychology shape innovation.